What is TIFF? How to open .tif files and convert them to JPG or PNG

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) stores images with zero quality loss. Print production, document scanning, medical imaging, and archives have relied on it for decades.

.tif and .tiff are the same thing — just like JPG and JPEG. Scanners often default to TIFF, which is how people end up with folders of them unknowingly.

Quality comes at a cost: TIFF files are huge, and web browsers don't display them natively. That is why they choke email, fail to preview in chat apps, and get rejected by upload forms.

Windows Photos and macOS Preview usually open them, but whether the recipient can is another question. For sharing or submission, converting to JPG or PNG is the practical answer.

For email, chat, or web uploads, JPG is the target: dramatically smaller and openable everywhere.

Our TIFF to JPG tool converts on drop, supports batch conversion with ZIP download, and runs entirely in the browser — handy for processing a stack of scans.

For crisp document scans or images you will keep editing, PNG is the better target — it is lossless, so TIFF quality carries over almost intact.

TIFF to PNG also processes in-browser, so confidential scans never leave your device.

TIFF → JPG goes from lossless to lossy; you cannot get the original quality back from the JPG. Keep the TIFF as the master and distribute the JPG.

If storage is tight, archive the originals to an external drive or cloud storage and keep JPG copies in your working folders.

TIFF can hold multiple pages in one file — fax software and office scanners produce these. Our tools convert the first page, so plan accordingly if you need every page.

To share a whole multi-page document, export the pages as images and rebuild them into a single PDF with the image-to-PDF tool.

TIFF is for preservation, not distribution. Master in TIFF, convert copies for sharing — that split satisfies both quality and convenience.

TIFF to JPG and TIFF to PNG are free, signup-free, and in-browser on Filewisp.